Apple (AAPL) Q3 2017 Earnings Call

“The combined iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus family was up strong double digits year over year. One decade after the initial iPhone launch, we have now surpassed 1.2 billion cumulative iPhones sold.”

They are keen on autonomous systems

“We are very focused on autonomous systems from a core technology point of view. We do have a large project going and are making a big investment in this. From our point of view, autonomy is the mother of all AI projects. And the autonomous systems can be used in a variety of ways and a vehicle is only one.”

The drivers of Apple growth going forward include emerging markets

“I do think that we can grow both in units and market share….And so what are the drivers? The installed base is growing. It’s still growing very strongly. That will generate more upgrades over time. I feel good about our ability to convince people to switch. And where the developed markets the first-time buyer rates are down other than places like Japan perhaps, the emerging markets, we haven’t even gotten started yet, really. From a revenue point of view, we had very strong growth there. Emerging markets ex-China were up 18% year on year. It was a record for us, so we see a lot of opportunity in these markets.”

Created 2m jobs in the US

“We’ve created 2 million jobs in the U.S., and we’re incredibly proud of that. We do view that we have a responsibility in the U.S. to increase economic activity, including increasing jobs, because Apple could have only been created here. And so as we look at that 2 million, there are three main categories of that, and we have actions going on in each of them to further build on that momentum. The first category is app development. About three-quarters of the 2 million are app developers. And we’re doing an enormous amount of things to deliver curriculum to both K-12 with Swift Playgrounds in the K-to-6 area, other curriculum as you proceed beyond grade 6 under the Everyone Can Code area.”

Luca Maestri – Apple, Inc.

High interest and satisfaction with Iphone

“Customer interest and satisfaction with iPhone are very strong with both consumers and business uses. In the U.S., the latest data from 451 Research on consumers indicates a 95% customer satisfaction rating for iPhone 7 and 99% for iPhone 7 Plus. Among consumers planning to buy a smartphone, purchase intention for iPhone was nearly three times the rate of our closest competitor. Among corporate smartphone buyers, iOS customer satisfaction was 94%. And of those planning to purchase smartphones in the September quarter, 78% plan to purchase an iPhone.”

Service is growing driven by the App store

“Turning to Services, we set an all-time quarterly record of $7.3 billion, up 22% year over year. The App Store was a major driver of this performance…the App Store, which is the largest of our Services categories, is seeing an increasingly larger amount of paying accounts. On a year-over-year basis, the number of accounts that are actually transacting and paying on the App Store is growing very, very well.”

On App store spending trends

“What we’re seeing and we’ve seen over a long period of time as we keep track of these cohorts of customers, we see that as customers get on the App Store and start spending on it, we see the spending profile is very similar across generations of customers. People tend to spend more over time. Obviously, you have different spending profiles in different geographies around the world, but in general you see that trend across the board.”